Here.

“When you criminalize free trade, only…criminals engage in free trade. That’s why you see the thuggish behaviour you do. Legalize the trade, as some games and worlds have, and you have harnessed legitimate and normal human activity, and then can more easily identify and prosecute the criminals, i.e. those who use fraud, spamming.”

An homage, if you will, to the idea that legalizing prostitution will end street prostitution, and make it respectable and safe. Or that legalizing drugs will reduce crime surrounding drugs as well as overdoses caused by bad drug batches. In both cases, political stances I’m not automatically opposed to.

But for RMT, I’m not buying it. If you believe that gold farming causes disruptive game situations such as kill stealing, then legitimizing RMT in this case is more likely to cause disruptive behavior, rather than reduce it. As the EULA stands now, gold farmers are incentivized to hide their activities, and not leave any sort of paper trail of CSR complaints that might show up in logs. Make it legal, and players will no longer ‘play it safe’, and can bring out any anti-social behavior in order to protect valued turf.

There are good arguments for RMT. This is not one of them.